Wednesday, December 06, 2006

This is an earnest plea to everyone who works in marketing to carefully consider their words. It’s a riff I picked up from the musings of Seth Godin, Doc “Cluetrain” Searls et al that I don’t think has received sufficient credence. Times have changed yet we are still using the marketing language of yesterday. The main culprit is that most turgidly robust of words, “consumer”. It’s refusing to die, but it should. It is entirely inappropriate in today’s marketing context.

Back in the early days of advertising, media choice was limited. The people of Britain had only one channel with adverts to sit in front of, blankly absorbing messages. And we lapped it up – we trusted ads and companies back then. They wouldn’t lie to us. So perhaps we deserved the term “consumer”. We were docile and passive. Like cattle chewing the cud of commercials. And “the consumer” is apparently still alive and well today.

A Consumer

Much is talked about media fragmentation, web 2.0 and generally an increasingly complex environment for marketing. In this new context, people do not buy in the way they used to. Cheap & fast internet access has set information free. People are becoming comfortable with, and highly adept at, identifying their ideal purchase for themselves. They research, they compare, they carefully select. If they like your product and brand enough they’ll even create their own ads and PR.

Does this sound like a passive, docile creature – a consumer? I suggest not. To me it is a far more predatory behaviour, far more sentient. People are actively hunting out the opinions of other like-minded souls and trusting this view more than the corporate message. We need to stop talking about “consumers”. The term is generic, mass-market and it does nothing to describe the purchaser of today, who is now an active participant in the media world.

But what is the alternative? Some people want to cling to “consumer” from what amounts to a brutal lack of imagination: “But what will we call people who are not customers?” The imagination-lacker has unwittingly answered the question adequately themselves – “people”. Or, if you must use jargon, then how about “prospects”, “suspects”, “potential customers”? My preference is for anything that reminds us that we are not marketing to a demographic or a database segment – we are always talking to human beings with brains just like ours.

I recently attended the IAB’s “Engage for Autos” conference. And very good it was too. The presentations were all delivered by web-savvy, smart people who know about media-fragmentation and how empowered the customer is and the necessity to engage individuals. And yet they all talked about the mass, generic “consumer”! It felt so wrong.

So please stop using the term “consumer”, unless of course you’re making a parody of what marketing used to be like in the bad old days.

Monday, October 30, 2006

Monday, October 16, 2006

I've been working on a new business pitch recently to extend our remit on an existing Client. We can obviously offer our Clients economies of scale from a financial point of view. But we can also offer the equivalent from a thinking point of view - the Client doesn't have to pay twice for the same thinking applied to different channels of customer communications. I'd like a good phrase to describe this. "Thought Consolidation" is my best so far. Any ideas?

The next generation does not see a difference between on and offline. For them digital technology is not a channel, but an intrinsic part of life. It’s how they organise themselves, interact with friends and express themselves. However it still remains a tool – it is a means to an end.

The universal driver is to feel belonging, to be able to identify with a scene, an attitude or group. The children of “Generation @” are Skaters, Riders, Townies, Technos, Goths and Geeks. Finding a sense of identity is paramount. And technology is the key to finding it. Marketers speak to the youth audience as a homogenous mass, yet they see themselves in clearly segmented groups that have strict attitudinal and behavioural demarcations.

Their attention is divided and reactive to the myriad incoming communications they receive via their handsets and computers, so they’re hyper-distractible. As a result they’ve become a generation highly adept at dodging messages, not listening long enough to hear and also filtering out what’s not important to what they’re doing. They’ve evolved a 6th sense for spotting fakes – obvious ploys to infiltrate their world for commercial purposes rarely work (Google will need to handle YouTube very delicately if it wishes to continue to see exponential growth).

The next stage of connection for this youth audience is predictable – as accessing the internet and digital content via mobile handsets becomes a more and more plausible option, “Generation @” will be conducting the vast majority of their inter-human connections via their handset. This will correspond to a significant revenue opportunity for whomever is providing the handsets & network services.

Retail trends away from ‘price’ to ‘authenticity’ are highly relevant to this audience – they want to buy into a genuine story, something they can identify with and believe in. When they shop they’re seeking an experience. They want to be able to try products, get some proper advice and be treated with respect – witness the success of Nike Town and the ever-burgeoning Apple Store retail experience.

In summary, there is huge potential with “Generation @” to be the provider of choice for the identity-giving technology they crave. Delivering an authentic experience is the key to this, playing on their terms – creating a virtual store in Second Life will get a conversation started with the right audience, but if it is not delivering something exceptional, then the conversation won’t go quite as you planned.

I recently saw a comment that some copy should be written to "make it sound like it was written by a copywriter". I assume that this meant that it should be written well - I can't imagine anyone wanting their copy written badly!

On deeper consideration, this comment is so utterly redundant. A copywriter, by definition, does not write like a copywriter. Their job is to write in the style of the brand they are representing. The writer themselves may well have their own style of writing that it quite different from the work they produce for their Clients.

Tuesday, October 03, 2006

Found this picture over at Presentation Zen. This exemplifies so many things about poor presentations. Check out that visual aid - text too small for the audience to read and way too complicated (the audience will be struggling to read rather than listening to the speaker). Check out the presenter on the right - text book crime of reading from the slide, alienating the audience. I can guarantee that this was one hell of a dull presentation.

Friday, September 15, 2006

Throttle. Marvellous. It sounds & feels satisfying to say. It conjoures up images of Spitfires and the early days of aviation for me. You know that someone knows about engines when they refer to a throttle rather than an accelerator or some other comparatively banal terminology - perhaps a racing driver, but definitely a Spitfire pilot and certainly my Dad. I also like the fact that more throttle means less restriction on the fuel supply, so technically less throttling being done! Presumably the issue the throttle was created for was to limit the speed of an engine rather than increase it. Here's a Wikipedia description for those wanting some technical detail.

Thursday, September 07, 2006

It only gets worse with the linked banner at the oddschecker.com website. Words fail me. What happened to creating a debate in the customers' head? What happened to intrigue, to telling the joke, not shouting "I'm funny"? What happened to crediting your customers with a modicum of intelligence. I want to cry. "You're stupid if you don't check your bets with us." Oh really? Now kindly f*** off.

I spotted this on the London Underground. Please can someone tell me why this isn't the most moronic ad I've seen in a long time. What sort of unintelligent life-form produced this and thought it was good?

Wednesday, September 06, 2006

Tuesday, September 05, 2006

Chugging. Charity Mugging. Face to face donor recruitment. Whatever you want to call it, I hate it. It's Urban Spam. However I realise that this is an entirely personal and subjective view. So I intend to develop a more objective viewpoint. I've created a blog to chart my progress at ihatechugging.blogspot.com. And also a Squidoo lens to act as a repository for chugging information at www.squidoo.com/chugging.

Friday, September 01, 2006

A thought provoking piece about how providing "simulations" can be a more powerful way to demonstrate your brand than any ad - link

This quote used in the post sums up why - “You can’t influence people. You can only put people in a position to influence themselves”. Simulations as described are much better at doing the latter - "People trust their senses. They don’t trust ads."

On a recent holiday I went to visit the Bayeaux tapestry. The medieval relic that depicts William the Conqueror's accession to the English throne (William the Bastard before he won the battle!). It is the sort of thing that every English person know's about - it's practically imprinted into our genetic code, certainly a fundamental to junior history lessons. Simply seeing it is magic - there it is, right in front of you, the actual thing, nearly 1000 years old!

However, to someone who didn't know the history, it could be incredibly dull. It is after all a tapestry. The story that goes with it makes the difference, giving it that aura of fascination. It is a fundamental part of the story of England - William I is the first King you learn about - it's the beginning of the history of England.

There's also an issue of relevant here. The tapestry is relevant to me as I am English and have a vague interest in history. Someone not English given the same story and shown the cloth is unlikely to have the same reaction.

(Via Boing Boing) Here's a customer driven campaign to save a piece of brand iconography - the "ball on a pole" outside 76 fuel forecourts. It seems like the brand masters want to make it a more bland and standard pillar. Makes you wonder why the people at 76 are bothering - removing a bit of a brand experience that people care about - link.

The natural world never ceases to amaze me. This article talks about how parasites can change their host's behaviour to improve the parasites chances of replication. The implication is that human behaviour could be altered by some of these wee beasties without us knowing anything is wrong. This has relevance to viral ideas and "Ooze" (Objects of Sociability) - the ideas most likely to spread are the ones that change the beliefs / behaviour of the carrier to that they are more likely to spread.

Thursday, August 03, 2006

Tuesday, July 25, 2006

Post from Jeff Jarvis quoting an Ad Age article. It seems that a single advertiser can significantly increase ad-recall when being the sole advertiser on an online streamed show. This is, of course, only useful if ad-recall is a relevant measure of advertising effectiveness. I doubt it made the advertising more relevant to the reader - link

This post about a presentation from TED is about how children can solve tasks more efficiently than allegedly trained professionals. It reminded me of a quote from Charles Baudelaire - it's all about genius requiring the mind of a child:"Genius is no more than childhood recaptured at will, childhood equipped now with man's physical means to express itself, and with the analytical mind that enables it to bring order into the sum of experience, involuntarily amassed."There are parallels here with Edward De Bono's work on lateral thinking - how our thinking as adults is so trained into logical, vertical thinking that we need to free up those constraints to be truly innovative. In other words you need to re-find the child's way of looking at things, free from hierarchy and procedure, to free your mind to being innovative.

Post from Gaping Void discussing and voicing other bloggers' opinions on what I consider to be the key marketing change that will happen soon / is happening now. Stop trying to mind-control people, you won't succeed. Instead give people something to engage with and talk about. Give them a steer and see where it leads. Link

Readers of Tipping Point will be familiar with how little things can have a huge impact. Presentation Zen takes a look at how some insignificant little signs can make a world of difference to the impression created in the reader. The little things all add up. Link

Poignant post from Pink Air about intrusive and interrupting as a strategy. "I still don't understand how people can use the word intrusive (that is, "disturbing another by one's uninvited or unwelcome presence") as if it's a good thing." The example quoted is advertising spam at it's most rediculous - laser etching onto eggs. Link

Wednesday, July 12, 2006

Being a man of small stature, I always enjoy Seth Godin's riffs on small being the new big - here's one of his latest posts on the subject talking about how fear of the small guy is spreading - link. It's well worth following the link to Jeff Jarvis's latest Dell conversations.

Wednesday, July 05, 2006

A competition for an automotive information website highlights the lack of meaning in traditional brand values. The brands mentioned are quite distinct yet the values that describe them have a good deal of overlap and lack real meaning. The manufacturers are obviously using better brand descriptors elsewhere such as tone of voice, but what value is being added by values? - link

Tuesday, July 04, 2006

The link at the end of the post will download a PDF document written by Jeremy Bullmore in 1972. I found it via the Staufenberger Respository. It's frightening to see how things have hardly changed in the 34 years (34 years!) since then - how many advertisers still have not grasped that "consumers" are people who think, who make up their own minds. I was also surprise to find what I assume is the source of my favourite planning adage about comedians telling jokes not telling people that they're funny - link

Monday, July 03, 2006

This post from Grow Blog resonated with my current thought-train (more on this sometime soon). It comments on Long Tail type buying patterns that the internet has enabled - people being able to find what is really relevant to them, rather than what they are effectively forced to choose - link

Friday, June 30, 2006

Seth Godin comments on how easy it is to not play fair in the online environment - link. And on a similar note, Pink Air raises the question of what would you do if subliminal advertising was legal - link. One of my favourite film quotes is by Jeff Goldblum's character, Ian Malcolm, in Jurassic Park: "Yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should”. Honesty has got to be the only route. Someone will find you out at some point and your house of cards will come tumbling down.

Wednesday, June 28, 2006

There's been talk on Boing Boing a few times about the BBC releasing it's footage as an online archive. This seems to be a step in the right direction - a resource to find images and footage - a bit like Getty Images / iStockphoto but also incorporating video - link

My last post showed a shocking bit of interactive work from Mercedes-Benz which seemed to convey none of the right values about the cars. Here is some really engaging work simply at the other end of the spectrum, all about the company's attitude to how they make their product - link. There are some comments about it on the website of the agency that produced it, including some blog links that reference the site - link

Thursday, June 22, 2006

No real revelations here in this post about how the internet is changing our lives - empowering the small fry - but it provides a useful summary. I'm posting it mainly because I like the biblical reference point! link

A thought from a blog I've just come across - Pink Air. This is essentially about customer generated content. One key thought is that with all this quality stuff being produced by customers, agencies could be in trouble - link

At the moment, I've only seen decent customer generated content for quite exceptional products and brands - ones that inspire customers to give a damn (I give you FireFox Flicks). So perhaps the role for the future agency will be about desparately trying to flog the "also rans". Hugh MacLeod observed a while ago that there are two basic survival choices - to be the cheapest or the best. There'll be plenty of work for agencies for a few years yet whilst the middle ground remains.

Observation from Seth Godin. By going beyond the call of duty it is pretty easy to delight customers. However, not if customers are expecting to be delighted. The out of this world quickly becomes run of the mill - always under-promise and over-deliver - link

Monday, June 19, 2006

Russell Davies hates Urban Spam: shouty marketing drivel that invades your life, providing no benefit at all - spam for the offline world. Russell describes it as "the last desperate interruptive marketing arms race". I have a good deal of sympathy for his viewpoint. This link will take you to his latest post. This links to the category of posts on the subject. Urban Spam is only going to get worse as we are bombarded by advertisers who thought that they should because they could. Wrong! Hopefully Russell's campaign will fuel an almighty customer back-lash.

Thursday, June 15, 2006

It has long been my firm belief that it is not necessarily the mistakes that are important, but how you recover from them. To err is human. So is to forgive. Customers know that you will make mistakes. Products will fail, customer service can go awry, Murphy's law happens. However, they will forgive you if you make up properly. Say sorry. Put your hands up and confess your sins. It'll make you a lot more credible that pretending nothing went wrong. Here's a splendid example that I found on Russell Davies' blog - it's a product recall notice from Asda - link

Saturday, June 10, 2006

Friday, June 09, 2006

If you're not a reader of Boing Boing, you should be. A "Directory of Wonderful Things" should never be ignored. This link is one of the reasons why I think it's fab. An obscure way to make some political ripples in the US is posted, shared for everyone to enjoy - link

Thursday, June 08, 2006

Seth Godin has talked before about how human generated search such as del.icio.us can be much more powerful than Google for really powerful content. Here's a powerful comment to suggest that companies should be doing a lot more about it - link

And a blog I found via Russell Davies makes a tremendous point about companies not thinking about customers' total experience - for example with incompatibility between different / upgraded models with a product range - something that Apple have got spot-on - link

Tuesday, June 06, 2006

It struck me the other day whilst working on a new brief that "consistent" (considered a good thing) is not very far along a spectrum from "repetitive" (normally a bad thing). Have a view on where your advertising is working along this (fine) line.

Monday, June 05, 2006

Here's some recent outdoor advertising from Gaymer's. That lovely ice cold drink. Young, attractive ladies drinking it in a trendy bar. Just the sort of thing you may like to associate with in these 'hot' summer months. But what is it? The bottle looks like a beer bottle. Fortunately, from having grown up in the South-West of England, I know it's a cider. Cider has had a bit of a rennaissance recently with Magner's, but they are hugely proud to announce what they make. Gaymer's seem to have forgotten.

One of the strands of thinking I'm finding most interesting at the moment is the shift from the old linearity of pavlovian-esque advertising to a more complex model based on associative networks. Russell Davies has some thoughts on addressing complexity in this video post - link

Saturday, June 03, 2006

Here's a good bit of web 2.0 fun....spelling with Flickr images. Before t'interweb enabled people to share stuff simply because they could none of this would have been possible or remotely interesting - link

Tuesday, May 30, 2006

Number 27 is the work of Jonathan Harris, who is behind the "We Feel Fine" site that I wrote about in my previous post. For example, 10 x 10 is a photographic snapshot of the globe. Well worth a trawl through.

Friday, May 26, 2006

This site - We Feel Fine - searches the blogosphere for phrases such as "I feel", "I'm Feeling" etc. and then collates them to view in an amazingly engaging way, you feel like you are poking about in a pool of emotions - link. It also takes information about the weather and where the person was posting from to provide some context and make it feel especially personal. There's a good description of it here.

Tuesday, May 09, 2006

I recently came across the concept of the net promoter score. It is beautifully simple - ask your customers the single question "Would you recommend XXX to a friend or colleague?" and you have a superb indicator of how your business is doing and a good predictor of revenue growth. You can see more about it here (a company set-up for conducting the research), here (for some research done by Bain & Co, here (for an interview Ogilvy conducted with a chap called Fred Reichheld or here for some research by LSE.

In this McKinsey Quarterly article there is a discussion about how psychological biases can impact exit strategies (I think you may need to register to view the link). I found it most interesting for the biases themselves. The article itself describes "The Confirmation Bias" and "Anchoring & Adjustment". But you may need to follow these links to Wikipedia for "The sunk-cost fallacy" and "Escalation of Commitment" (which have very similar roots).

Great stuff from Guy Kawasaki. His post links first to an article about moving on from the 4'Ps' of marketing. He then links to a post about creating a meaningful marketing plan in less than 40 pages. And then Guy merges the two into his own marketing plan for the Cluetrain generation - link

Wednesday, May 03, 2006

This press ad is part of a new campaign from frozen food manufacturer Birds Eye. The people behind the campaign have no doubt laboured hard to find a truth about why frozen food is better for you than 'fresh' - which is all based on the fact that the frozen food remains technically fresher. I'm not convinced that anyone is really going to buy this idea as, in my opinion, it is against most of the public's worldview. The fresh carrots I bought in the grocer's on Saturday hadn't been out of the ground that long, were not rotten and I'm pretty sure will taste nicer than their frozen counterparts.

Advertisers not only need to find the truth, but to then make it believable. This will often start from the worldview, rather that directly contradicting it. With all the news about healthy eating at the moment, it will take more than an ad campaign to shift people's opinions favourably to frozen food.

I found this thought-provoking quote as part of a Tom Peters presentation.“These days, you can't succeed as a company if you're consumer led - because in a world so full of so much constant change, consumers can't anticipate the next big thing. Companies should be idea-led and consumer-informed.” - Doug Atkin, partner, Merkley Newman Harty